Many computing systems allow the use of confined execution environments. A confined execution environment may also be considered a sub-execution environment, or an environment within a principal environment provided by an operating system under which all programs on the computing system execute. Confined execution environments may have particular rules associated with them, and/or they may be confined within a particular portion of a directory tree of the execution environment. Confined execution environments may simply be associated with a role on the main execution environment of the operating system.
In an environment where confined execution environments are used, it may be necessary to terminate, often referred to as “killing,” a process or all processes within the confined execution environment. However, there may be a race condition that would allow a process to create a new process (fork) while old processes are found and terminated within the confined execution environment. Thus, a malicious process could be able to avoid termination until the confined execution environment is shut down completely, or the system is reset. Such a condition is often referred to as a “fork bomb,” referring to the “explosion” of new processes forked within the confined environment. Such a condition can prevent normal execution a computing system, requiring a disruptive reset.